I’m not a baker. I pretend for the sake of this blog that I am the best baker ever, but let’s get real. I’m not very good at it.

Despite this fact, I’ve been baking a lot lately. Sugar cookies for two hockey tournaments and a Nutcracker performance, gingerbread cookies and muffins for post-church coffee hour, and of course the twelve (!!) gingerbread houses that aren’t going to make themselves while I write this post. That may not sound like a lot, but I’ll bet I’ve made 10 dozen cookies and 4-5 dozen muffins in the last month. Oh. And I also made this bread.

First, can we talk a bit about the blog from which this recipe came? Half Baked Harvest is one of (very) few blogs that I allow into my inbox every single day because the photos are so beautiful. And the blog is a great read. Tieghan, the brain behind the blog, is a twentyish, (apparently) self-taught home cook with a beautiful visual sense, some delicious recipes, and a sense of humor. For real, though? She kind of makes me feel bad about myself. Are you kidding me with the talent this young woman has? And you know she is working hard to be so successful. I’m twice her age and what the hell am I doing every day?

Enough pity party. Let’s talk bread.

What I loved about this bread recipe was that I could get the whole thing together the night before I served it, then pop it in the oven the next morning for a warm and delicious treat. I’m totally making it again over Christmas. We’ll have plenty of mouths around to eat it.

The dough itself is simple and can be made start to finish in your stand mixer. I did not take Tieghan’s advice and use egg nog, but I will next time. I think Tieghan is probably the kind of person whose advice I should be taking.

Ok, so once the dough has risen, etc. you simply roll it out and add your goodies. It’s just like making cinnamon rolls or pizza rolls. But here is the cool part. Instead of cutting the rolls all the way through, Tieghan provides instructions for cutting the bread dough and squooshing (my technical term) it together so that it looks like you’ve gotten all fancy with the bread but you haven’t. Impressed? Of course you are. Now stick your dough in the fridge and go to bed.

Wake up! It’s time to bake. My bread needed to go a bit longer than recommended, probably due to altitude. I’m all for gooey, but let’s make sure it’s cooked, ok? Drizzle some (easy) frosting on top of this bread and serve it warm. This would be a great brunch addition or perfect to have ready for house guests. Maybe even make an extra loaf and drop it off at the neighbor’s? Yep. You are winning friends now.

(P.S. Thanks to my husband for the action shots. Capturing what it really looks like in my kitchen one t-shirt at a time.)

I’ll be hiding out in this secret garden today if anyone needs me... #wishthiswasmyyard

School picture day. And it finally feels like fall in #houston

Today is #dayofthegirl , a day created by the UN to celebrate the strength of girls and acknowledge the barriers girls face in all over the world. Yesterday in our #girlscout meeting, we made pins to wear today and we worked thru the @wagggs_world curriculum around International Day of the Girl and gender equality. I can best sum up the girls’ discussion by quoting one of the girls: “Mind blown.” (Imagine this with full 8yo drama quotient and hand motions. It was rich.) 👧🏾👧🏼👧🏽👧🏿👧🏻 I wrote a big, long caption about the importance of this day in a global context but the fact of the matter is that my 8yo daughter, who proudly wore a pin last night to dinner (swipe left), won’t wear her pin to school today because she thinks the boys will make fun of her. “They expect me to like certain things and act a certain way, Mom.” Full stop. 👧🏽👧🏻👧🏾👧🏿👧🏼 I’m angry. And I’m incredibly sad. And I’m sharing that here because real life. 👧🏻👧🏽👧🏿👧🏼👧🏾 I get that kids will be kids and the boys in question certainly don’t have an intent to exclude girls simply because they are girls. Or if they do have that intent it’s because both genders think the other stinks at this age. I get that my daughter’s insecurities are her own, her assumptions about what may happen are her own, and I’m sure I’ve contributed to both by being a loud mouth feminist. But y’all. Our kids - our daughters and our sons - deserve better than this. They deserve better than to continue to live within the confines of worn out stereotypes of gender roles. I’m open to ideas. How are we going to change this? #bethechange

I don’t typically celebrate “wins”. To be clear, it’s not that I object to public acknowledgment of success, just that it’s more my nature to move on to the next thing once (if ever) something is complete. It’s also possible that my idea of a win has always been substantially larger than getting dinner on the table. Hence the parenthetical in the previous sentence. 🌮🥟🥞 Today, however, I want to acknowledge some wins and I want to do so publicly so that those of you reading this who are like me, who have what others call “high expectations” (virgos and type As anyone?), and who beat yourselves up over the incomplete items on the list instead of noticing the things that you actually did (and that probably weren’t even on the list to begin with) - YES ! I'm talking to you! You might possibly recognize yourself. (Also that was certainly a run-on sentence. Let’s move on.) 🏅🏆🎖 Today, I said yes to yoga with a fellow mom who I don’t know well, which was uncomfortable on more than one front. And it turned out to be amazing. Health and well-being win. 🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️🧘🏻‍♀️ Today, I intended to join in with One Room Challenge for the 5th time. I sat down and wrote a blog post about why I was participating only to find in the writing that I no longer felt the need to participate. So I didn’t. And on top of that, I didn’t feel that the time writing was time wasted. Down with busy for the sake of busy win. 🏡🏡🏡 Today, my son lost his campaign for representative of his third grade classroom. He came home in tears. But we talked, and he went from never trying anything new again to never trying things with voting to maybe trying things with voting in a couple of years. He ended the day in smiles. I’m not going to lie. There may have been an ice cream sandwich involved. Parenting win. ✅✅✅ Today, I got real dinner on the table, with vegetables and everything, for the third day in a row, despite soccer and music lessons and whatever else. And my kids ate it. And we talked while we ate dinner. Normal, right? I’m going with a win. 🥗🍝🍪 So there it is. The little things have big impact. Tell me, if you’ve made it this far, what was your win today? #ryhsyinnercircle

Thirteen years married to this guy today. Pretty damn lucky. #adventureisoutthere